March 20, 2010

Gordon Beckham‘s transition from third base to second base, in theory, shouldn’t be any more difficult than moving from Double-A to Triple-A to the major leagues to becoming the Sporting News rookie of the year at a position he only played a few games in professionally.

“The turn” as Beckham calls it, was a problem when the spring training games began — only because there were very few chances for him to practice the play with a runner bearing down on him and his back to the play.

“We had our first one the other day,” Beckham said, two weeks into spring training. “It was a clean transition. We actually got the outs.” Beckham did trip over the base runner, however. …

The White Sox probable lineup comes very close to the optimum lineup, just 0.5 behind. One reason is that Guillen puts Pierre, Beckham and Quentin consecutively in the lineup. The LAT slots them 9-1-2 instead of 1-2-3, but keeping those three together helps get the most out of the order.

The lineup used now is ‘Pierre, Beckham, Quentin, Konerko, Rios, Pierzynski, Ramirez, Teahen and Kotsay.’ When I used the LAT back in February 1, the projected lineup was ‘Pierre, Rios, Quentin, Konerko, Teahen, Beckham, Pierzynski, Ramirez and Kotsay,’ and the results were:

Best lineup: 4.89 runs per game
Probable lineup: 4.81 runs per game
Worst lineup: 4.67 runs per game

Seems the current lineup projection is closer to the optimal run production!

“At this point, I’ll be honest with you. There’s a lot to do around here.”

Williams was referring to the large number of players in major and minor league camps and that “people have to come to me with Twitter updates and blog updates, websites. I don’t even understand that kind of stuff because I got a lot of stuff on my plate.”

“We’re in spring training,” Williams said Saturday afternoon in his box overlooking home plate at Camelback Ranch. “And I’m in mid-game addressing something that I asked everyone (a) couple weeks ago to spare me – which is the talk of blogs, these radio shows, these Twitters and Web sites and all of that.

“I don’t have time to deal with any of that crap. I care about putting this team together and getting these guys ready to play a championship season. That’s all I care about. The other peripheral things – I don’t have time.”